Power pools at the points of intersection. That’s a clear theme in several of the most moving things I’ve read in the past few days.

Here are four items I recommend highly. Were we to do a multi-variate regression analysis of a few different dynamics in the world, these here might be explorations of independent factors that drive dependent factors like social cohesion, business productivity, justice and injustice.

In the relationship between mind and machine, product and platform, core and crowd – the latter of each pair has grown so much stronger now that the relationship between each of these must be re-examined…The business world is always changing but in transitions as profound as this one, things are even more unsettled than usual.
–Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future, Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson, 2017

And finally, tonight I listened to the most powerful speech I’ve heard in my life. If it doesn’t change your perspective on race and gender, then you’re not paying attention. If you already know all this stuff then you’re paying far more attention than I am – and chances are you’re not. Incredibly effective talk. Kimberlé Crenshaw – On Intersectionality – keynote – WOW 2016Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, – the academic who coined the term ‘intersectionality’ and co-founder of the African American Policy Forum – gives a keynote on the unique challenges facing women and girls of colour when it comes to the struggle for gender equality, racial justice and wellbeing.

Jeremiah kept adding to his list, though, and I quickly fell behind in trying to find each new addition to his list on Twitter and adding them to my Twitter list. Last month I finally figured out a way to get myself caught up and a list that was 141 members strong is now up to 277!

Here’s how I caught up on list updates, if you’re interested. I copied all the names on Jeremiah’s updated list into a Google Doc, then I copied all the names on my Twitter List into another Google Doc. Then I emailed my favorite virtual assistant service Fancyhands and asked them to send me a list of the people on Jeremiah’s list but not on mine. They did that promptly. Then I sent the resulting list back into Fancyhands on another work request and asked for everyone’s Twitter username on that list.

Then I turned the resulting list into a bunch of links to those Twitter profiles. Then I changed my Twitter password. Oooooh, scary! Then I gave my new Twitter password to my fabulous new friend Steve Malloy and he did me the favor of adding all the new people to the official list! Thank you so much, Steven, for helping all of us keep track of the Tweets of social strategy leaders around the world!

I wrote a post this evening about Google’s forthcoming announcement that all Google Apps for Your Domain customers would be enabled with OpenID provider functionality within the next few weeks. It was emailed to a public list and it seems pretty clear that it wasn’t meant to be.

I think this is very important. Writing the article was an opportunity to address the tension between small innovators and big vendors in the digital freedom space. (Hey, new phrase for me, but isn’t that what this is?) That’s something I’ve been thinking about peripherally for awhile. Both are needed, people say. Innovators on the edge to come up with crazy ideas and be authentic – big vendors like Google and Facebook to deliver the ideas to the people, validate them and grant the functionality only possible with scale. It’s not always pretty, though.

I ran with this story just as fast as I could, but I think I will revisit it because it’s a big deal. For what it’s worth, I sure didn’t start my RWW headline with “EXCLUSIVE” or anything like that – because that’s so crudely self-aggrandizing that it’s embarrassing to read.(more…)